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Good thread. I do all kinds of things, I turn a few things down now when it suits me and most of it is due to the customer. I wont put a local repair on something that should be condemned.

I had a broad come in with a 30 yr old F100 truck with 1 poorly working brake and wants me to put a drop hitch on the factory bumper so she can hook on a 4 place horse trailer. I threatened to call the state police right there. Un real.

Having the repair done is good. JT is spot on in the grand scheme of things and well worth heading, you got to be prepared or at least consider it. In the real world I am with Portable, its what I do but its done with the consideration with most of the issues JT stated and I could usually put a mechanical engineer on the stand to say so as well as a couple of truck inspectors the county or state might call as experts say I do good work above average and they can trust I fixed a known problem. "As a note I like the 5 times stronger comparisons. Good point, hard for many to understand not everything is as strong as it can be."

I havnt studies as far as some but being a general fart in the wind over what is 30 some plus years have seen a few busted things, a lot of repairs survive, we fix a lot of engineered? equipment,,, most of it. I would rather see an attempted repair here than none.

I didn't realize flat plate was stronger than angle. I learn something every day. I agree with welding it up tight but skipping around to minimize the amount of brittleness created by heat. The other problem is a weak spot will develop at the latteral weld line (at the ends of the plate or angle) due to the heat affecting the channel. Weld across a plate and do a bend test, it will bend at the weld area every time. When making sleds to hold rocket motors during test firing we had to be careful of this same situation. One must realize there are people that need to work and someone will need to fix this. I also wondered about a full modular replacement of this side channel. Might be costly but well worth the effort.

FWIW, if I were to repair that, I would replace the tube section, or not at all. However, I wouldn't repair that, as those things scare the bejesus out of me. Won't even drive next to one if I can help it. Went to school with a guy that was crushed to death by one that had a failure.

Hey there Fireman, The problem was not the angle, It was more about stitch welding and letting salt water get between the 2 plates and the rust that would break the the welds within a year or so rolling down the highway.

When it comes to heat treated truck frames, Your right, welding across the frame is the first place that it will break.

However, The tubing on that car hauler is highly unlikely to be heat treated in that spot.
My weld certification which is a D1.1 - 3G position showed me that you can bend a weld into a U-shape without any cracks at all.

So your best to weld all the way around for this application.

To answer your question about what is stronger an angle or a plate on the top and bottom, The plate on the top and bottom is stronger.

Keep in mind that JtMc has made alot of good points as far as liability so I dont mean to discount what he has told you, I'm not an engineer but have done a ton of repairs over the last 25 years with the guidance of several engineers which has taught me the proper methods of how to repair stuff.

Well a known problem went down the road without a repair, more common than one might think and in the grand scheme of things may be worse or ar least nop better than the unqualified giving it a shot? That remark was not aimed at the OP who probably would have3 done a fine job. The guys that don't and don't care are not posting here.

It could be made passable with a couple pieces of plate and half a dozen small bolts. Might not last forever but neither did the original. I say some context is in order.

There are lots of bad welders, lots of them been doing it a long time aint no better than the beginners. I seen it all as many of the other guys have including a repair we took where the owner of the big welding company with the towns name on it must have sent the 16 yr old enough to drive and a welder to fix equipment at a hospital, come to find out this might not been so stupid as it happened a couple times.

Any journeyman worth a darn could have made a permanent repair in a couple hrs. This is the problem as much as any other. If the customer had called in Canada maybe or other places welding is more regulated he might have stood a chance but here you never know who is showing up. In the world JT lives in lots of testing and production demands weed out the help.

A guy like Joe here or Portable that answers their own phones and shows up personal to do the work, a company owner they will get a great job every time. Many of the repairs are hooked to welding skill mostly in the fact that the amateur doesn't have the strong out of position stick skills to facilitate the design of a good repair, it doesn't mean I wont make it as easy to do as I can but there is no faking good out of position stick skills.

I would'nt have any problem repairing that and have been working on things like that for about 28 years.

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Keep in mind, I have been putting hitches on trucks forever, everything from a pick up truck to Gravel trains.
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I draw the line however when it comes to hitches on cars, Not enouph frame for me.

I've got no problem welding on big trucks or trailers. We've stretched/shortened quite a few big truck frames and welded in a bunch of wheel lifts on big truck recovery trucks when the truck front ends went to plastic in the '90's.
I couldn't count the number of frame welds I've made on 250 ton haul trucks.

But every car hauler trailer I've ever been called on was too far gone. And broke down on the side of the road or in a truck stop.